Sound Effect Bleep

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Noel: Miss Kokonoe, what were you going to do with Mr. Ragna the Bloodedge after you had put him to sleep? Kokonoe: Well, no reason not to tell you. First, I intended to take his [INFERNO DIVIDER!] and put it in a [CARNAGE SCISSORS!] Maybe with a little [GAUNTLET HADES!] too? Heh, my goodness, I can only imagine what his [HELL'S FANG!] will [DEATH SPIKE!]

Normally used when a character is going to say something rude in a programme where the FCC (or other Media Watchdogs) will leap on it. It's the audio equivalent of Scenery Censor.

Strangely enough, the bleep effect often makes the joke funnier than if the swear word had actually been used (thus forming the premise of Censored for Comedy comedy). This is particularly true when it's used to cover up a Cluster F-Bomb. This is likely because profanity is often a mundane occurrence in real-life conversation, whereas loud incongruous bleeps are not. Unfortunately, it can have the same effect on scenes that are supposed to be serious.

Examples:

So far Berlitz's given name in Pokémon Special has always been obscured with someone's speech bubble, more than likely her own as she shouts something right as her name is said.

It was revealed recently. it's Platinum.

In the [adult swim] broadcast of Samurai Champloo, some of Mugen's profanity was bleeped with scratching sound effects in accordance with the show's hip-hop tone.

As was the time Jin called a minor noble "an unimportant piece of [scratching]". This was in fact the first thing censored in the series.

Spoofed mercilessly in a The Prince of Tennis OAV, set in an Alternate Universe where the heroes play beach volleyball instead of tennis. When Inui figures out what's going on, he tries to tell the others but reality itself bleeps him every time he says the word "tennis". At one point, Ryoma says "What are you going on about? I don't understand all those beeps."

Overused in Kodomo no Jikan to the point where it sounds like Rin has learned to speak in bird chirps.

The Un-Reveal variety is used in Code Geass to prevent the viewers from learning C.C.'s real name. In something of a subversion, the sound effect is actually reasonable - the sound of water dripping off the ceiling of the cave she and Lelouch are in.

Then what about the shot where the water ISN'T dripping, and Lelouch says her name again? In the dub, that was pulled off with a mute, but Fridge Logic dictates that at that point, The Un-Reveal is just getting pretentious.

Before C.C.'s true origins were revealed later in the series, some people believed that the sound actually was her real name. The concept of the Geass originated in Celtic mythology, where it was typically placed on mortals by members of The Fair Folk. Since these are often a type of nature spirit, it actually makes a bit of sense for a fairy's true name to be a natural sound like that of a water droplet falling on stone.

After Haruhi Suzumiya blackmailed the computer club president with contrived photos of him sexually abusing Mikuru, the club president protests that all clubmembers are witnesses of the blackmailing, to which Haruhi counters:

Haruhi: "Then I'll tell everyone at school that all you geeks ganged up on her and fucked her!"

Also, the name of the computer club president was bleeped out with Shamisen (the cat) making noises.

A sex scene near the end of the original Lupin III manga series had various words bleeped out. The scene was interrupted by a fan letter saying, "What the bleep is up with all the bleeps?", with a similarly censored reply.

In Lucky Star, the discussion between Konata and her dad about Gund*ms is filled with these. Soujirou's monologue uses this even on non Gund*m words.

Everytime something copyrighted comes up in Lucky Star, that isn't owned by the anime company, is bleeped out.

In Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu, the swear words in Sousuke's hilarious Drill Sergeant Nasty rugby training routine are bleeped with what sound like sped-up loon calls. It's a complete non sequitur, but it made the scene that much funnier.

In Hayate the Combat Butler, there's one scene where Nagi realizes she's alone with Hayate in her bedroom and thinks, "What if he does BLEEP and BLEEP and ... no! Anything but BLEEP!" (Of course, he doesn't do anything inappropriate, which irks her.) Also, instead of a visual for what she was imagining, the artist substituted a scene of a cruise ship: "Due to content restrictions, this footage has been replaced."

In the preview for the next episode at the end of one of an episode of To Love-Ru, Lala wonders why Rito is training his body, then excitedly comes to the conclusion that he 'wants to *beep* with me!'.

An episode of the Show Within a ShowMagical Kyoko in the manga portrayed Kyoko telling a fellow that in thanks for something nice he'd done, she'd "have XXX with you!" (He responded in shock, "Is that alright? This is a kid's show!")

"Huh!? You've never even *CHUU* before?? Not even a little *MEEEEP* on the beach!?....are you a saint?

France gets this in an episode of World Series, when describing to Italy what "intercourse" is. Certain words are censored with *oh*, *WOW* (in a feminine voice), and another *WOW* (with a much deeper voice), before ending the speech with one long *BEEEEEEEEP*.

America also demonstrates this trope in an early strip/episode. During a meeting, he is talking while eating a hamburger. It's subverted in that he's not saying anything perverse, but his speech is still muttered by his chewing.

In B Gata H Kei, anything related to sex (the word sex itself, condoms, virginity, etc.) gets censored out by chirping birds. Considering the kind of show this is, you're gonna be hearing those birdies a lot.

In the [DARLING!] dub outtakes for the [DARLING!] Urusei Yatsura movies, [DARLING!] profanity gets [DARLING!] censored by a [DARLING!] soundbite of Lum yelling, "DARLING!" A different [DARLING!] soundbite of the same [DARLING!] yell is used for [DARLING!] censorship purposes in the [DARLING!] outtakes for Remember My Love.

A radio spot for Hewlett-Packard which revolved around a parody of automated call centers featured this trope: "Your call is very important to us. If you believe this, please stay on the line, or press 1 if you think we don't give a *beep*"

Played with during an Aflac commercial that takes place on a construction site. Every time the duck mascot tried to give the company's name, he was invariably drowned out by a jackhammer, a truck horn, etc.

There was a commercial for Knorr instant dinners where the word frozen is bleeped out so it sound like they are dropping the f-bomb a lot for no reason. And then the announcer says "Frozen doesn't have to be a bad word."

This beer commercial features a "swear jar" encouraging the use of profanity, getting out of hand to such an extent that you can almost only hear bleeping in one speech at the end.

A 2008 Macintosh commercial has PC explaining that Microsoft is no longer using the term "Vista", and pressing a Big Red Button to attempt to bleep Mac whenever he says the word, with little success.

The commercials for "Powermat" has the sound that the Powermat makes when it starts charging something to censor the actors' cursing.

They actually double the use of this trope in that the actors are saying "beep" instead of cursing.

Rockwell tools shows a guy complaining because he can't use his [beep sound effect] tool (from some other company). The white-coated scientist comes in and says, "At Rockwell, we have a whole department so you don't end up with bleeping tools you can't use."

During Dr. Evil's cover of Hard Knock Life in Austin Powers in Goldmember, a long string of profanity is silenced out, leaving only,"'till then, I'll j—— on my.....butt.....her brains out......uncalled and splooge in your a——-, that's all!". It should also be noted that the soundtrack CD version censors out the words a bit more, so that the silences make the line even less audible.

The stage play The Front Page ends with the line, "The son-of-a-bitch stole my watch!" The 1931 film version used the line, but punctuated with a precisely timed pounding of Adolphe Menjou's fist on a typewriter.

At the end of the classic spaghetti-western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, where Tuco's shout of "You know what you are?! Just a dirty son of a...!" cuts the last word by playing the movie's trademark prairie-dog howl, and transitioning from that into the main theme to accompany the "The End" sequence.

In Wayne's World, Wayne and Garth get into an argument outside the airport. Eventually Garth snaps and says to Wayne:

Garth: You know what you can do with your show? You can take a [long sound of an airplane landing, drowning out Garth's voice, interspersed with Wayne's horrified reaction shot; no kidding, it actually takes this long] until the handle breaks off and you have to find a doctor to pull it out again!

'Wayne: Kiss your mother with that mouth? You've gone mental!

Played with in Blazing Saddles, where Gabby's repeated attempts to yell that the new sheriff is a "ni-" are canceled out by the church bell ringing.

The TV version of the film does this with all swears. For example, when the townsfolk are singing early in the film, the ending of the line "Our town is turning into shit" is replaced with a fart-like false chord on the church organ.

Used to humorous effect in RoboCop (1987), where a man holding up a convenience store with a machine gun unloads on Robocop, clearly swearing for all he's worth, but his own gunfire drowns him out. (The edited-for-TV version, in a change that goes past "irksome" and into "mind-boggling," dubs in the criminal repeating "Why me?" over and over, ruining the gag.)

At the end of Robocop 2014, talk show host Pat Novak vents his anger at Dr Norton blowing the whistle on the events of the movie and starts delivering the signature Samuel L. Jackson MF-Word, which are simultaneously bleeped out by the studio.

Used to maintain a PG rating in Smokey and the Bandit. Sheriff Buford T. Justice being stopped by a state trooper who looks at his dilapidated police cruiser (result of many incompetent encounters with other police or road objects):

State Trooper: Look, you can't drive this piece of shit on a public highway. Sheriff Buford T. Justice I'll thank you not to use that sort of language in my presence. State Trooper: Oh, I'm sorry. (large semi truck is approaching) Sheriff Buford T. Justice Apology accepted, now (semi truck sounds horn as Buford mouths the words:) Fuck off.

In John Waters' film Cry-Baby, there's a scene that calls for three uses of the word "fuck". However, in order to get a PG-13 rating at the time, the last "fuck" was actually bleeped out in theaters.

Used in Ocean's Twelve when Basher (the explosives expert, now a rapper) is arguing with the sound guy that his song is completely obscured in bleeps, while their own Cluster F-Bomb is being covered by a phone. "Where the riiing is that riiinging phone?!"

Made even more hilarious by one final ring after Basher's already answered the phone. "Oh, riiing..."

Right at the beginning of Shrek, when the title character finishes reading the story. "Like that's ever going to happen. What a load of—" *toilet flush*

Done in Shrek the Third as well. Upon being told that Fiona is pregnant, Puss tells Shrek that he's f-*Foghorn Going Off*.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: When Grandpa George learns that Mike Teavee, finder of the fourth Golden Ticket, doesn't like chocolate (he took the trouble that he did to track down the ticket simply to show off his tech-savviness, not because he wanted to visit a chocolate factory), he goes on a furious rant. Charlie's mother promptly covers the boy's ears before he — and the audience — can hear the worst of it...

In Phantom of the Paradise, an offhand "fuck" during Philbin's conversation with Swan is interrupted by a burst of feedback from a nearby microphone.

In the 1967 The President's Analyst, peace-loving psychiatrist Sidney Schaefer ends up blasting away at bad guy minions with a machine gun (and growing to enjoy it). He bursts through a cloud of grenade smoke shouting "Take that, you hostile son-of-a-*RATATATATATATAT*!"

Done straight in Fat Pizza, considering the movie itself is a crapload of Cluster F-Bomb, this makes it hilarious.

The TV edit of Demolition Man uses this trick to clever effect: In a future where all swearing is met with a buzzer and a small fine, it compromises by bleeping out anything above a PG rating early. Unfortunately, there are still a few scenes where due to sloppy editing, it seems to go off for no reason at all.

In the film adaptation of The Spiderwick Chronicles, the main characters set a trap for the goblins chasing them using tomato juice in an oven, which is like sulfuric acid to goblins. As the goblin leader walks into the room, he notices the trap and screams "OH SHI-" and is promptly cut off by the sound of the oven blowing up, vaporizing the goblins.

As the page cut shows, the theatrical edit of Live Free or Die Hard does it to John McClane's Catch Phrase, as he shoots through his own shoulder to kill the film's villain. The unrated version restores the full word.

In the 1971 G-Rated The Andromeda Strain, Dr. Leavitt tells team leader Dr. Stone that she is not happy about the disinfecting protocols being used on them, when she now has to be subjected to a device that is going to do an invasive inspection on them:

I have been barboiled, x-rayed and xenon flashed, I'm telling you, Stone, you can take your Body Analyser and shove it up your... [the door closes on her at this point with a "schloop" and a "thump" closed.]

Later on in the movie, after Todd is killed, Julie says to Envy "For the record, I am so pissed off for you right now", in which Envy replies to her "Shut the *glitchy beep sound* up Julie".

Another, more subtle, example is when Stephen Stills tells Scott he doesn't want his problems with Ramona to "cock-block the rock". The offending part is drowned out by feedback from the bass amp. Strangely, the certification board didn't have a problem with the line "you cocky cock!"

According to Edgar Wright, it was either keep Julie's swears, or cut "you cocky cock."

The movie Kuffs both uses and subverts this trope in the same scene, when Kuffs' dispatch radio overrides every swear word in a conversation between him and his police chaperon until the end, where he very clearly enunciates the F Bombhere.

The movie To Sir, with Love features a scene where Barbara Pegg (played by Lulu) calls a classmate a "son of a bitch." It's drowned out by a train going by, but you can clearly see her mouth it.

In the film adaptation of The Cat in the Hat, The Cat (as a chef) starts arguing with the host over his new invention, The "Cupcake-inator". He then threatens the host to end him, and ends up cutting his own tail. Sally warns the chef that he cut his tail off, who shouts out "SON OF A B-" before a long bleep is heard and the broadcast is terminated.

In Rango, Rango(not known as that at the time) blows a toad's cover from a hawk while running away. As the toad is being swept away, the scene ends with the toad shouting “SON OF A—” but then the eagle's loud ~ CAW! ~ is heard.

The makers of the film adaptation of James Joyce's Ulysses deliberately did this when the BBFC requested that portions of Molly's final soliloquy be cut. The result so annoyed the BBFC that they just passed it uncut with an X rating.

In The Martian, when marooned astronaut Mark Watney learns that his crew hasn't been informed that he wasn't killed outright in the disaster that forced them to leave Mars, the scene's vantage point switches to the exterior of the Mars rover where he conducts his communications with Earth, looking at him through the clear canopy of the rover. Thus, we clearly see, but don't actually hear, his reaction of "What the fuck? What the fuck?"

In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Lee Jordan calls a player on the opposing team a "filthy, cheating bastard", but in print only the "b" part is heard, as Professor McGonagall's own shouting at the player drowns it out. For once she didn't pay attention to Jordan's language (or favoritism, or any other junk Jordan pulls regularly while commentating).

Used oddly in Chamber of Secrets. The teachers are patrolling the corridors at night due to the monster attacks, but Team Harry has to sneak out to do something so they drape Harry's Invisibility Cloak over themselves. As they pass Snape, Ron stubs his toe and swears. Luckily, Snape sneezes at the same time. Given the context, it's likely the word that was covered up was "shit".

In the Artemis Fowl series, particularly the eighth book, The Last Guardian, "bleep" itself seems to be an actual Gnommish profanity. At least one character shouts "What the bleep?!" in confusion.

In the Xanth series novel Yon Ill Wind, The Adult Conspiracy magically censors swearwords so that children will not hear them. If children do swear, the word is bleeped. This appears to be an upgrade from the original Conspiracy. The previous book, Roc and a Hard Place, centered around the issue of speaking a profanity in the presence of a minor and referred to events from The Color of Her Panties, where the Conspiracy and swear words were also significant points. And note the novels have always used Symbol Swearing in print.

Tough Magic has outtakes in the back of the books, one of which has the Author's attempt to curse beeped out.

Used in L. Ron Hubbard's Mission Earth "dekalogy" to (bleep) out any word more objectionable than "damn" or "hell," which includes (bleep)tch and (bleep)ard. This is to avoid upsetting the delicate sensibilities of the robots supposedly translating this story so it can be published on Earth, who oddly enough don't censor all the murder, rape, murder-then-rape, torture, underage sex, etc. that happens in the story. Also, several racial slurs make it through without incident.

Live Action [CHOP!] TV

In the Mathnet case "The Case of the Parking Meter Massacre", George Frankly asks a witness, Fred Furd, what kind of guy George Steinbrenner is. He answers, "Aw, George is a...", and the honking of cars drown out what he was saying. George Frankly stops smiling and says, "I heard that about him," while Kate just looks shocked at what she just heard.

When censoring short words or phrases, the Mythbusters also often use various sounds reminiscent of workshop accidents, like a crash, bang, clang, thud, etc. They're also not above using cartoony sound effects if it's funny that way.

Adam lampshaded this as well once — after an actual minor curse which (in some airings) got bleeped out, Adam then said, "Holy bleeping bleepity bleep!"

One episode had them testing a myth that swearing increases pain tolerance. To save money on the inevitable beeping, Adam constructed a helmet that obscured the wearer's mouth (since putting in anti-lip-reading graphics is more expensive than just adding a bleep to the audio track.) It was decorated with Symbol Swearing.

Ghost Adventures members Zak, Nick, and Aaron tend to get quite colorful when things get extremely spooky or really, really tense.

On Deadliest Catch the profanities are blocked with ship noises (such as horns and the wind). Because you often see people talking from the side or behind, you aren't quite sure if they've cussed or if the ship actually blew its horn. However, during serious or emotional situations, they'll usually revert to the standard "bleep" sound effect.

In American Chopper and similar shows we often watch escalating situations between the protagonists which are more or less completely bleeped.

In the "World War Three" episode of Doctor Who, a Slitheen utters the first syllable of a word meaning "testicles" before 10 Downing Street is trashed by a missile.

In the mini-episode "The Last Day" a soldier is instructing another soldier in the use of his helmet P.O.V. Cam, which will record everything that happens to him in case he's killed in action.

"There's a language filter, so it will cut any time you say—" (screen pixels out, then jump cuts to a later moment)

In an episode of NCIS ("Bete Noire"), Kate has been taken hostage along with Ducky and Gerald. She makes an aspersion on the terrorist's parenthood. He asks her if she's got anything better to say. She repeats, adding an adjective that you can't say on American TV. As she says the adjective, the shot Gerald screams.

One episode of Chef! had Gareth's particularly foul insult of Everton blanked out in this way, ending in "What are you?" and Everton had to repeat the insult back. It was funny.

In the Monk episode "Mr. Monk and the Daredevil," there is a scene where Randy is trying to listen to a detective while talking on his cell phone, but every time the detective is saying the most important part of the sentence, he is drowned out by the sound of a passing car.

The IT Crowd has one of these, when Jen delivers a Cluster F-Bomb to a visiting Japanese delegate who has stood on her foot with massive Doc Martens boots on; it's immediately revealed that the building is installed with a literal 'Profanity Buzzer' that comes in very handy in exactly this situation. Unfortunately, in a neat little subversion, the executive who managed to 'buzz' Jen out isn't quick enough to catch her boss Denholm, who tells her in no uncertain terms what he thinks of her actions before the executive can catch him.

Another, when Jen claims she can learn computing skills, and asks Moss what he's doing. His explanation is replaced with static hiss, while Jen nods thoughtfully and replies "I see." Then she admits she's lying.

Hilda: Oh, would everybody just- (bleep blocks her out) Sabrina:(to Jerry) But she's not swearing! Jerry: I know, but this way it sounds like she is.

Monster Garage censors the occasional curse with sounds of metal hitting metal. At one point Jesse made a speech to a slacker and it sounded like someone was dropping a truckful of monkey wrenches on a tin roof.

Rescue 911: during their reenactments, sensitive information about the cases were covered up with phone static or other related sound effects.

An episode of Leave It to Beaver entitled "Substitute Father" had Beaver get in trouble in school for swearing at a bully. The bad word is drowned out by the school bell ringing, but we can tell he swore anyways due to Miss Landers's shocked reaction.

Used to comic effect in episode "Jose Chungs' From Outer Space", which features a police detective with a rather... blue vocabulary. However, his scenes are flashbacks that Scully is narrating to the titular Jose Chung, and as she isn't comfortable with the profanity, she 'bleep's him out — so whenever he appears, his dialogue is peppered with frequent usage of the word 'bleep' which he himself says.

Detective Manners: Oh, you bet your blankety-blank bleep I am!

Mulder and Scully get caught up with the cast of COPS while pursuing a "fear monster" in LA; of course, every obscenity was beeped. Even lampshaded by Mulder: "I don't think we're on live television, Scully, she just said [beep]."

Mulder uses the phrase "No shit, Sherlock" on the phone to Scully, with the profanity covered up by phone static.

Project Runway try to do it ineffectively. For instance, in one Project Runway show from season two, a contestant crows a two-syllable F-word, and the buzz is hiding the "ing" part.

Top Chef, but they are careful to make it possible for its audience to recognize the dirty word.

Top Chef Masters leaves in Ludo Lefebvre's several outbursts of "merde" and "merdeux".

One scene that probably confused many a young viewer from Christmas Eve on Sesame Street took place when Oscar had cause to say to Big Bird, "You are, without a doubt, the stupidest [passing subway train suddenly makes his speech incomprehensible, this goes on for some time] bird I ever met."

One very good example from The Chaser's War on Everything occurs during the infamous "Eulogy Song". Andrew Hansen calls various celebrities by increasingly harsh names and whatever he uses for Kerry Packer is covered up with an "Arooona!" sound effect. Quite probably, this is intentional, because it certainly makes the song funnier than if an actual piece of swearing had been used.

In the Fox's The George Carlin Show, the episode "George Speaks His Mind" is loaded with LOTS of these, each of them a Precision F-Strike.

George O'Grady, after dropping off his ex-wife Judy and her husband off, gets a passenger who tells George to go to the South Bronx, who happens to be an inspector for the city's cab companies. A driver cuts George off and...

George: Hey! Putz!

Other Driver: HEY, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!

George: I'm driving! What the hell are YOU doing?!

Other Driver: HEY, [BLEEP-BLEEP] YOU!

George: [BLEEP-BLEEP] YOU, TOO!

Other Driver: HEY, [BLEEP-BLEEP] TWICE!!

George: [BLEEP-BLEEP] ... WITH A BROOMSTICK!!!

An interesting variation occurs in Black Books, after Bernard is accidentally locked out of the shop by the new security door and Manny's unhelpful reaction prompt an invective-strewn rant; however, because the security door is soundproof and we're seeing it from Manny's perspective, we don't actually hear what Bernard is saying, only see him hysterically jumping up and down waving his arms about and shrieking what are clearly some very unflattering things about Manny in the process.

In the episode "Circus, Circus", Ned tells Emerson that a secretary said a clown they're tracking was "A no good lowdown—" only to be interrupted by a loud flame thrower being shot across a scene by a circus performer. Once the flame clears, Emerson stares at his mild-mannered associate and remarks that "I've never heard you use those words before..." This episode also used a Curse Cut Short, a similar trope.

Then in the next episode, from a resurrected nun in a convent:

Sister Larue: Are you [church bell bell rings] kidding me?

Ned: Shh!

Sister Larue: you shh! I've been putting up with silence for ten [church bell bell rings]—

On an episode of The Bill Cosby Show from the late '60s (where Cosby played high school gym teacher Chet Kincaid), one of his students constantly swore; his profanity was covered by the Road Runner's "Beep Beep" sound.

The Colbert ReportChristmas Special featured Jon Stewart describing the "Jewish mistletoe tradition" with what added up to a forty-five second censor bleep. With hand gestures clearly visible throughout.

(Extremely dodgy black slang from a proper news channel on President Obama)

Jon Stewart: "That was f[BLEEP]ed up."

One edition of Dead Ringers featured 'Ozzy Osbourne' on QVC (a shopping channel) hawking a profanity buzzer which used a new sound effect each time.

Which soon ran out of [BEEPS] and had to use a variety of other sounds (including wedding bells) before breaking. There was too much swearing to censor.

One episode of Titus had the titular character in jail, with his father laughing at him through the glass window. This particular cell had a switch on it that could cut off the sound. His dad had fun switching it off everytime Titus said a swear word.

The Friends episode The One Where Joey Dates Rachel has Phoebe swearing vehemently at the top of her voice at a video game machine just as Ben, Ross's ten-year-old kid enters. But we don't hear anything - Beethoven's Ninth (!) plays over it.

One episode of Martin had a situation where Gina became popular on his radio show and became a D.J./announcer for a while. At the end of the episode, a man called the show and started to insult her. Martin was in the studio and grabbed the phone from Gina once he heard the man start to go off on her. This ended up with Martin's boss and co-host having to grab the control for the broadcast(they were live), carefully watching Martin's face and listening to his rant, pressing the 'bleep' button quite often as the credits started to roll.

Done very nicely using static on the Subspace Ansible in the final season episode 'The Dogs of War' on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, when Quark is talking to the Grand Nagus. Words static-ed out include 'b*crackle*stard', 'f*scrrrk*ing' and 'sh*sqrk*ging'. Interestingly, the bleeped words were included in the subtitles, though the f-bomb was toned down to 'frigging'.

In Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Glory stomps her foot in anger in already damaged building, causing it to collapse mid-profanity.

In the episode "The Pool Guy", Jerry points out that George won't like Elaine's newfound friendship with Susan, prompting Elaine to respond, "I don't really give a sh—", with her profanity cut off by her slamming of the bathroom door.

In the episode in which Jerry is dating Miss Rhode Island, Kramer is singing the Miss America theme, and Jerry interrupts him: "Oh, shut the [BEEP!] up!" Seeing as they are riding in the back of a limousine, the noise was an actual car horn.

"The Non-Fat Yogurt" used plenty of actual bleeps.

In the Stargate SG-1 episode "Heroes, Part 1", Jack O'Neill did this after Senator Kinsey attempted to use a conversation with Jack being caught on camera for political ends. Jack first made absolutely certain that the camera crew were still filming him, then, "You smarmy, self-righteous, opportunistic ass—*intercom and siren*Unscheduled off-world activation. You're nothing but a l—Repeat, unscheduled off-world activation." Judging by mouth movements, situation, character, Kinsey's expression, and the timing of the intercom's interruptions... the rest was very rude.

In another episode, Sam Carter refuses to ask out another female staffer on Jonas Quinn's behalf, telling him, "You are such a chickensh-" before getting cut off by an alarm.

The 1990's Australian police mini-series Phoenix got quite a few complaints over its use of foul language, so the sequel Phoenix 2 often masked offending words with various background noises such as passing cars.

In Father Goose, Walter is about to call Frank "a silly English son of a-" when the last word is cut off by the sound of a boat "accidentally" hitting another boat.

In the pilot of The West Wing Mandy is driving aggressively while talking on her cellphone. When she runs a red light, a passing car honks and cuts off her swearing.

During a scene of the Andromeda episode "The Warmth of an Invisible Light" where there are mortars falling on them as Dylan, Rommie, and Beka are walking down a hall, Dylan promises the Beka from an alternate reality that if she helps him, she can have his ship. When she asks (not knowing he's talking about one of the most powerful ships in the Universe) "What do I want with some old tug from Starship Habitats?", to which Rommie says "'Old tug' my a..." *mortar explosion*.

The Middleman not only bleeps out what would be actual swearing instead of Gosh Dang It to Heck!, but Censor Boxes their mouths as well. Aside from being a joke, this also referenced the fact that the series aired on ABC Family a network that (at the time) aired primarily family-friendly programming (that changed).

Three characters on That '70s Show had their moment when they flipped out and started yelling profanities, always bleeped out: Red has his in season 1 when he told Hyde to move in with the Formans, Kitty in season 5 when she learned Eric was about to move out, and once again in season 7 at the car show when Red paid no attention to her (this moment however was brief and the only profanity was masked by a honk instead of a bleep), and Bob in season 8 when he finally told off Red after "all those years cutting [him] down, calling [him] dumbass" (but apologized immediately after).

Also the famous moment with The Unreveal of Fez's real name. As he is trying to tell a girl he likes his name, the school bell rings and drowns him out so the audience cannot hear him.

A Corner Gas episode has a large rant by Lacy (the least likely character to do so) blocked out by the camera cutting to a very loud passing train, and ends with her putting $20 in the swear jar.

In the episode "Face Off," Wanda is announcing at a hockey game and exclaims, "The Dogs score! Holy sh—" Then she accidentally hits the buzzer.

Jerri's "Packing a Musket" poem on Strangers with Candy: "When I straddle and squat/To show you my —" (*bell rings*) Of course, you can still clearly see her say it, and it's also worth noting that what we do hear of the poem is undeniably filthy — it just doesn't contain any actual swearwords.

The Travel Channel show Madventures features two insane Finns hitchhiking around the globe into insane situations. Their SFXB is rather low-pitched, so it sounds like the host is saying "FOOK!".

The premiere of The Jeff Dunham Show has the following line from Bubba J. when a Jew is on the firing range:

"Happy Hanukkah, mother-*gunshot*"

Foul Ups, Bleeps, and Blunders had a segment that used the bleep sound to hilarious effect on a "Question of the Day" where a certain question was asked to random passers by. When one of the presenters (usually Steve Lawrence) says the question the first time, part of it (the main topic of the question) is bleeped out, leaving the audience to wonder what it is and end up laughing at the answers given, before the whole question is eventually revealed by Lawrence, with his co-host Don Rickles sometimes adding sarcastic remarks beginning with "If you were thinking something else..." (for instance: "How often do married couples <bleep!>?" (one answer involved getting on a motorcycle). The bleeped word was "argue")

Survivor has occurrence of contestants swearing. Tribal camp sound effects are used over.

"And just as I, Gary Oldman, would never join an NBA team just because I'm famous, I Gary Oldman would very much appreciate it if professional basketball players would STAY THE [BLEEP] OUT OF MOVIES!"

Done with the charcter of Vince in Mongrels who can't get through a sentence without at least three bleeps. Another example of the "bleeps" making it funnier.

Hot In Cleveland: As Melanie confronts her ex at the airport, a hapless flier has to keep passing back and forth through a beeping metal detector in time to her profanity. For ironic effect, the rest of the episode thoroughly establishes Melanie as preferring the Unusual Euphemism to actual profanity.

There are two episodes of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody wherein a loud noise prevents the audience from hearing Zack and/or Cody being cussed out. The first is sound of a bus horn while Zack's miniature golf date Ella cusses him out for being a poor sport. The second is when the ship's horn drowns out the sound of Carey cussing the boys out for shanghaiing her into doing practically every bit of entertainment on the ship.

In one episode of Clean House when Niecy asks the homeowner what her family thinks of the junk on her dining room table. She's promptly sound effect bleeped. The sound effects range from a car horn to a game show buzzer. Niecy immediately afterwards remarks how she "likes how you said that with a smile."

In the Swedish version of Come Dine With Me, the narrator asked one of the guests to tell a dirty story — but asked her to remember that it was a family program. She delivered:

Guest: Well, there were two [BEEEEP] sitting at a [BEEP], and one of them said [BEEEEEP], and then the other one sniffed and said "That's funny, I just thought I smelled [BEEEEEP].

Narrator: ...Well! And you at home, you should be happy you didn't hear that. It would have put you off your appetite.

Later, when she tells the joke to the other guests, the camera cuts away for several seconds until it returns.

In the episodes of Will & Grace that had Sandra Bernhard as a guest star, her cursing was continually overlapped with other noises (workmen drilling, someone making blender drinks...)

Dad's Army. In "The Two and a Half Feathers", Arthur Lowe plays a foul-mouthed sergeant in the Sudan War, with his swearing censored by disgusting fart-like sounds.

When Restrepo, a documentary about a small band of soldiers holding a tiny outpost in Afghanistan, was shown on the National Geographic Channel the language was bleeped only on the closed captions (a few slipped in).

Beadle's About was a popular hidden camera prank show on British TV during the 1990s. Any swearing on the show would be replaced with bleeping, and the offender's mouth covered with a cartoon Speech Bubble reading "Bleep" or "Oops." Its presenter Jeremy Beadle admitted that this was done even when someone ''wasn't'' swearing, just to make it funnier for the viewer.

After one of Super Dave Osborne's daredevil stunts inevitably went horribly wrong, e.g. his car being dumped into a crusher with him still in it, he often threw in a comment along the lines of:

Super Dave: By the way, if anyone ever wanted me to kiss my *bleep*, I just did.

One episode featured an interview with Fur-Q, a pretty spot on spoof of Gangsta Rap and how it is (or at least was) covered on mainstream TV. For the majority of the song, the only word censored is mother[trumpet stab], despite bitch and cock (which are used extensively) remaining. The final verse is just a long stream of swear words, only some of which are bleeped out.

Another episode has an interview with a Tory MP, which takes place while The IRA are carrying out a series of bombings across London. The MP, enraged by the IRA's behaviour, swears several times during the interview, but each time he does, he's drowned out by the sound of another bomb going off.

Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende usually will censor stuff in certain ways with specific sound effects. For example, during the "meetings" in the No Laughing 24 Hour shows, celebrity names are often censored with a gunshot when discussing a potentially embarrassing situation, while references to penises (usually the use of the chinko machine, among other things) is done via a electronic jingle.

On Maury, this happens often. It can become disconcerting when someone cusses inaudibly but is still beeped, causing random beeps during what seems like cuss-free conversation.

After Simon Horton dumps Geraldine in The Vicar of Dibley, she blows her stack at a parish council meeting and cusses out everyone present. Most of it is drowned out by a jackhammer from a construction crew outside, though you can pretty easily tell what she said by lip-reading.

Sometime in 1988 or 1989, a contestant was making random gibberish guesses when trying to solve the Bonus Round puzzle. One of their guesses was apparently (and unintentionally) a little off-color, so it was censored with a "cuckoo" sound borrowed from Pyramid.

On a January 2013 episode, a contestant uttered "Oh, crap, I forgot!" after being told that Round 3 was a Prize Puzzle (meaning that she would win a bonus prize for solving the puzzle). The producers censored the word "crap" with the buzzer that sounds whenever a wrong letter is called.

Father Ted used this not to censor foul language, but to prevent the audience from learning Mrs. Doyle's first name.

A rare example of a nonprofanity sound effect discretion edit: mere days after John Hinckley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan, an episode of The Greatest American Hero aired in which not only did the name of the protagonist, Ralph Hinkley, happen to come up naturally in conversation, but—and here's what really induced the panic somewhere up the production chain—June Lockhart (playing Ralph's girlfriend's mother) just happened to have a speech in which she declared that her daughter's beau must be a good man because his name sounded so nice. Since the conversation took place at an airport, Lockhart's references to Ralph's last name were hurriedly dubbed over just prior to transmission with the sound of an aircraft taking off. Both times. (The rest of the references to Hinkley's last name were equally brutally dubbed over with "Mister H", and the next week he suddenly became Mister Hanley.) The amazing result (discussed here):

Mrs. Davidson: Ralph! Oh, it’s such a nice name. You know, I’ve always thought that you can tell a great deal about a person by his name! [VROOOOARRRRR!!]—it’s just the perfect name for an educator, don’t you think so, Daddy?

Mr. Davidson: Hmm? Yeah, it’s alright.

Mrs. Davidson: Ralph [VROOOOARRRRR!!]—it says a great deal. Solid! Capable! Stable! Feet on the ground! [Cut to Ralph in the suit, flying over the desert, feet kicking in the air]

One episode of Supernatural is almost entirely rendered as a reality show being shot by some ghost-hunting nerds. The trope is invoked to let Dean and Sam use words they can't normally use on the show.

American Idol has sometimes done this during the audition rounds with angry rejects, as seen in this video of a particularly upset reject named "Rhonetta."

Happens on frequently Border Security. People tend to swear when arrested or something they can't bring into Canada is found in their possession.

On the special Christmas Eve On Sesame Street this occurs as the gang leaves the subway and Big Bird gives another idea as to how Santa can get down a chimney.

Big Bird: Hey Oscar, I know how Santa gets down the chimney! All he does is take that big belt of his and tie it really tight around his waist, and it makes him so skinny he fits right down the chimney!

Oscar: You are without a doubt the stupidest (train goes by drowning him out) bird I've ever met!"

Justified on Rescue 911, which uses bursts of static to bleep out Real Life victims' addresses during replays of 911 calls, in order to preserve their anonymity.

[PLUNK!] Music

"Girl on the Billboard," a 1965 country hit by Del Reeves, uses an electric guitar riff to cover up extreme profanity – quite possibly the f-word – in the line, "The painter said the girl wasn't real, better get the (bleep) on my way!" If indeed the f-word was dropped, the song – despite the censorship – would likely have been the first major hit in any genre to contain that word.

In the song 'Dirty Mouth' by New Found Glory side-project International Superheroes of Hardcore, beeps are used to censor out the swear words in the song, promoting the listener to use the replacement words supplied by the band. (Why say f[beep]/when you can say shucks/why say sh[beep], when you can say crud?)

The radio edit of Adam Sandler's song "Ode to My Car" uses various automobile/traffic noises to censor the (copious) swearing. Some people think this makes that version funnier than the uncensored album version.

Five Iron Frenzy parodied this (and the copious swearing of gangsta rap) in Part 8 of their mock rock opera "These Are Not My Pants": loud BEEP's are applied liberally and completely at random over Micah's improvised rapping.

The radio edit of Bloodhound Gang's "Fire Water Burn": "We don't need no water, let the mother-[HEE-HAW] burn." As with the Adam Sandler example above, some people find this edit funnier than the album version.

And the radio edit of "Bad Touch" replaces the words "doggy style" with the sound of a dog barking.

Some versions also block out "sex", "pants", and "nuts", as well as "getting horny now".

"Beep" by the Pussycat Dolls, where the sound censor was actually the main lick (no pun intended) of the song, and again aimed at making it sound dirtier than it probably was: "I don't give a <beep> Keep lookin' at my <boop> Cause it don't mean a thing when you're lookin' at the <beep> I'm goin' do mah thing while you're playin witchyour <beeeep>..."

Another song that has sound effects in the chorus in the official lyrics is "Paper Planes" by M.I.A.: "All I wanna do is *BANG BANG BANG BANG*/And *KA-CHING*/and take your money". In layman's terms, it's describing a mugging. Oddly enough, the sound effects themselves were evidently too suggestive for some radio stations - one censored version uses entirely different ones.

Subverted by the band James for the MTV edit of their song "Laid". The album version of the song (oddly, also used on the radio without edit) features the line "But she only comes when she's on top." The MTV version features the edit "But she only sings when she's on top" - and a close-up of the lead singer's face while he obviously sings the original line.

A musical number in Evil Dead: The Musical (yep) has a line that goes "And then we'll take that chainsaw and we'll shove it up your-" "Ash!" which is a bit of a moot point, since there's musical numbers titled "Stupid Bitch" and "What the Fuck Was That?"

"Da Mystery of Chessboxin'", and other tracks by the Wu-Tang Clan, often used standard Kung Fu sound and voice effects to censor curses in radio and video versions.

On a episode of Solid Gold, an 80s music and dance show, host Rick Dees began singing "Eat My Shorts". The words "finger" was censored out by birds chirping, and the "bird" was covered up with cuckoo sounds.

The clean version of Queens of the Stone Age's third album Songs for the Deaf put loud censor-beeps (akin to those commonly heard on TV)over all instances of "fuck" and one instance of "kill". Here's an example

The rap song "Super Brooklyn" by Cocoa Brovas (sometimes mis-credited to the Wu-Tang Clan, incidentally) samples the theme from Super Mario Bros. for its backbeat. Naturally, in the radio edit, the swear words are covered up with Super Mario sound effects.

The Lo-Fidelity All Stars' "Battleflag" contains a bit of a Cluster F-Bomb in its uncut album versionnote (about forty percent of the lines in the song use the adjective "motherfucking"). The radio edit version covers up the expletives by extending a reverb effect that was already used in the uncut verses. Many listeners didn't even realize it was edited because of this.

In Toby Keith's angry post-9/11 song "Courtesy of the Red, White, & Blue," he famously warns the terrorists that "we'll put a boot in your ass." The radio stations would sometimes replace the word "ass" with an explosion.

Martin Mull's "Humming Song" does something similar. In it he claims to have had second thoughts about the language in the song he's just written, such that he's chosen to hum in place of anything that might have been objectionable. The original, it's implied, would have been lurid indeed. It begins "Last night, I took you home, we began to... hmm, hmm hmm...." and proceeds from there.

In a particularly bizarre example, the video for the Electric Six's "Gay Bar" bleeps, of all things, 'war' and 'nuclear war' with whip-crack sounds. It came out as a single just after America's invasion of Iraq, so it was most likely a case of Too Soon.

In the radio/music video edit, the one curse word in Ween's "Push Th' Little Daisies" gets covered up by a sample of Prince shrieking (taken from the beginning of "Alphabet Street").

Huey Lewis and the News' "The Heart of Rock & Roll" substitutes a drum beat for the word "ass".

Subverted by Denis Leary's Asshole Song video, which lets all the words go through, but puts a large graphic of horizontal stripes with BLEEP across the center on the screen.

The Cascada song "Fever" has the line "Who the f—- is VIP", however, fuck is censored out with a background noise part of the song.

In Lady Gaga's "Lovegame", the vocalization "huh!" is used frequently throughout the song, mostly as an emphasis on the rhythm. However, in one line it is used for a different purpose; given the unsubtle nature of the rest of the lyrics, Hilarity Ensues:

"Government Hooker" from Born This Way has several swear words bleeped out at the end of the song, however it's pointless as you can still hear her singing them.

The radio edit of Lily Allen's "F**k You" is, understandably, in need of a lot of these, and it steps gamely up to the plate with quacks, neighs, spinning plates and a descending note on a swanny whistle.

The CD version of Lily Allen's "Friday Night" also utilizes this trope, though from the Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion it's quite clear what belongs there.

It's quarter two and we get to the front

Girl on the guest list dressed like a [record ripping noise]

The radio edit of "The Fear" censors "fucking fantastic" with a chime that sounds vaguely like a cash register opening - appropriately enough following a line about credit cards.

The radio edit of Missy Elliot's "Work It" features a well-placed elephant trumpet: "If you got a big *PHWOO* let me work it"

The German singer and comedian Frank Zander used these to parody censorship in music in his song "oh, susi (der zensierte song)". He tells the story of a song he wrote that the record company had censored. He sings the song with the lyrics censored by means of countless sound effects, and it seems like quite some nasty and R-rated stuff has been removed. Afterwards, he sings the uncensored version?which is revealed to be squeaky clean and actually have a different meaning than what one would suppose from the censored version.

Messed with in Chiodos's "Is It Progression if a Cannibal Uses a Fork?" A static-ed out part near the beginning of the song ( I wanna know what's going on in the $#^#$#$% little head of yours ) is revealed to just be I wanna know what's going on in the pretty little head of yours

When the band Negativland issued "These Guys Are From England And Who Gives A Shit," a retrospective based on the U2 EP, (the band insist it was bootlegged) they closed it with a painstaking edit of the notorious "Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For (Special Edit Radio Mix)" in which every single obscenity (and there was a lot of them) was replaced by the sounds of, among other things, breaking glass, dogs barking, and horns.

However, after roughly 8:50 of silence, you hear Every expletive that Casey Kasem used over the course of the song, all in rapid succession.

Bob Rivers has "What if Eminem Did Jingle Bells?" in two versions. One of them covers up the swearing with sound effects and makes for a much more interesting listen than the uncensored version.

Eminem himself used a variety of sound effects to mask the dirty language on the clean version of The Eminem Show.

Wired All Wrong have several songs where curses are either replaced by static or else chopped up enough to be unrecognizable - the unusual thing is this was done voluntarily and there aren't any officially released uncensored versions of the songs: Reportedly this is because Jeff Turzo, as one half of the band, had second thoughts about making an album with lyrics he wouldn't want his young son exposed to.

Two Brave Saint Saturn songs, "Enamel" and "Heart Still Beats", had the words "hell" and "pissed" obscured by record scratches and static. This was done on the actual album, and without telling the band beforehand.

The radio edit of DMX's song "Party Up" uses various sound effects to cover up the copious cursing and references to murder in the song.

Played with in George Jones' "Her Name Is..." where he censors himself so that his lover's husband won't kill him. The sound effect used is notes on a clavinet:

Her name is [note note note]

Her eyes are [note]

Her hair is just like [note note]

And she measures [note note note]

But someday I'll fill in the lines

When she and I are free

And we'll walk in the sunshine

[note note note] and me

The Lucky Charms Title of KMFDM's Symbols album is dropped this way in the lyrics for "Down and Out": "It makes you strong, it makes you [BEEP]. Don't let it go to waste". So it may be unofficially called "Bleep", as that's a five-letter word. Another common Fan Nickname is "Curse".

"Zip" from their first album: "Don't get your [guitar lick] into the zip of your pants".

Groove Coverage's "Runaway" has the line "No, I am not your f@$#ing second choice", censored with a standard beep.

"It's Hard to Kiss the Lips At Night (That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long)" by The Notorious Cherry Bombs (translation: a side project by Rodney Crowell's backing band along with Vince Gill) censored the word "ass" with a spring sound. This even got lampshaded at the end, which features the line "It's all right if we say it / 'Cause the radio won't play it."

The radio edit of Tenacious D's "Fuck Her Gently" uses censor sounds that get sillier as the song progresses.

Kid Rock's "Cowboy" uses a variety of "standard" censor sounds early in the song, like radio static and a record scratch. Near the end, lampshaded with a female voice stating "radio edit" over a censored line.

In "Stand Up" by Love Tribe, the line "asses shaking" was censored with a POW! vocal sample.

Monster Magnet's "Space Lord" manages to be relatively radio-friendly (aside from massive innuendo), despite the chorus' only words being a constant repetition of "Space lord, mother-motherfucker". The phrase is faded out every time, so "mother-mother..." is all that's audible. They probably let a few slide. Who'd notice, out of dozens of repetitions?

Some radio cuts of Nelly's "Ride Wit Me" censor the line "If you wanna go and get high with me/Smoke an L in the back..." by replacing the word "high" with the sound of someone taking a drag (presumably on a blunt) and "L" with the sound of said toker exhaling.

The clean version of House of Pain's "Jump Around" bleeps out, cuts, or changes many words, including "pops", "I'm smackin' the ho", "bombs", "shotgun", and "death".

The music video version of Digital Underground's "The Humpty Dance" has a lot of comical sound effects to cover up sexual innuendo (for example: "I'm still gettin' in the girls' pants..." has "girls' pants" muted by a car horn honking, which goes well with Humpty grabbing a woman's rear, the line "In a 69, my Humpty nose will tickle your rear" has "69" muted by a record scratch and "rear" muted by a woman's scream, and "I get laid by the ladies..." had "laid" muted with a weird record scratch/car tire screeching noise). Of course, the "Burger King" in the famous line, "I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom" was bleeped with an ordinary bleep.

The clean version of Mylo's "Drop The Pressure" changes the Cluster F-Bomb to something unintelligible.

The Harvard fight song "Ten Thousand Men of Harvard" is perhaps one of the oldest examples of this. Most people know the fourth verse only and some know the dog-Latin first verse ("Illegitinum non carborundum"), but during the instrumental parts the percussion section sings a filthy pseudo-Latin second verse that ends in a raucous English "and save some for me" and a third verse that consists entirely of "la" and "fuck" (these date back to at least the 1940s). The dirty verses are mostly inaudible due to the instruments drowning them out (which is the intent).

David Lynch's "Good Day Today" is another example of a song where the sound effects aren't actually covering anything specific up: Part of the second verse is effectively "So tired of [explosion] \ So tired of [machine gun fire]".

In "Pretty Fly (For a White Guy)" by The Offspring, "They're gonna kick his lilly a__" is usually censored with either a bleep or a drum hit.

Big & Rich's "Rollin' (The Ballad of Big & Rich)" has "I'm a crazy son of a [bad word] / But I know I'm gonna make it big and rich." Another voice literally says "bad word" over the offending word, and the lyric sheet in the CD even says that.

But they couldn't torture me half as well as well as little birthday [BLEEP] in Chucky Cheese Hell.

"Darryl Stokes, that dumb sonofa [BLAM], almost shot Santa Claus."

"Freak Me" by LXR, being an Intercourse with You song, makes judicious use of these: "Yes I wanna f[beep] you on the floor", "Am I so horny to suck your p[double beep]", etc. However, the line "get your ass over my face" is left uncensored.

In Aerosmith's "Legendary Child", the backing vocals create this effect at one point:

Makin' love at seventeen yeah we had the luck But we traded them toys for other joys yeah we didn't give a [woah woah woah].

Khia, in the clean version of My Neck, My Back (Lick It): "My neck, my back, lick my [Ah] just like that".

Manic Street Preachers' Stay Beautiful, has the line 'fuck off' replaced by a guitar squeal, so that the song could be released as a single. This turned out to be a good idea as it led to a tradition of the crowd yell the 'censored' words when the song is played at concerts.

Bomfunk MC's Live Your Life has the offending word in the line 'So much shit that my nose is uplifted' censored out and replaced by a sniffing sound. This has the (probably) unintentional effect of making it sound like he's talking about cocaine. This is present even on the album version, even where other words are intact. The original word is present in some of the remixes. It is thought that it was edited out so that it would be serviceable as a single in English-speaking countries without further editing. However, Live Your Life wasn't released outside Scandinavia and Germany anyway (and neither was the parent album Burnin Sneakers), due to the failure of the previous single Super Electric in the UK (which turned out to be the band's last release there).

Used to hilarious effect with one version of Dropkick Murphys "Pipebomb on Landsdowne". Half the words getting bleeped out aren't swears, and a lot of swears aren't bleeped out.

Remix artists Zeds Dead used a sample of Juicy J saying "You say no to ratchet pussy" in the original version of their song "Ratchet". In an alternate version, subtitled "Meow Version", they play this trope for laughs, replacing the offending word (in its many repetitions) with sounds of cats meowing. Interestingly, this actually leads to a bigger variation of sound throughout the song, as multiple different meowing samples are played along with the original Juicy J sample.

"Lightning Does the Work" by Chad Brock:

Well, I've seen the lightning blow a cypress tree in half The thunder's busy talkin', and lightning's kickin'...[thunderclap]

And "I Whistle A Happy Tune" - "Whenever I feel a[buzz] / I hold my [buzz] erect / And whistle a happy tune / so no one will suspect / I'm a[buzz]". Not to mention "All Through The Night", in which they bleeped out every single word except "...all through the night"!

Radio 1 also did a spoof quiz called 'Badly Bleeped TV' in which sections from tv shows, news broadcasts etc. were played with some of their (completely innocent) dialogue bleeped out; listeners had to guess what the words were. The bleeped-out sound clips end up sounding... well, just listen.

Similarly, radios will often censor popular songs by replacing curse words with humorous sound effects. The result of this, ironically, often makes the effect much naughtier than the original. Example: The Gwen Stefani song "Holla Back Girl" replaces the word shit with a sexual moan. This "sexual moan" is bananas?!

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, one of the new radio series. The book Life, the Universe and Everything on which it was based featured an award for "The Most Gratuitous Use of the Word Fuck in a Serious Screenplay"; since it was scheduled to be broadcast at 6.30 pm the word was still uttered by the actor but completely masked by the sound of a starship engine.

An I'm Sorry I'll Read That Again episode did the censored song thing to Tom Jones' "What's New Pussycat", and a medley of other works by the same artist.

This was in fact a running gag on the show, which was done with the Julie Andrews songbook, the Rolf Harris songbook, etc. As a BBC censor played by Graeme Garden commented on one episode, "In this way, we can change songs which are mildly suggestive at first and make them sound positively filthy."

Also, one episode had Jo Kendall read the rules of broadcasting to the rest of the cast.

Jo: There are to be no swearwords.

Bill: Damn!

Tim: Bugger!

David: Knickers!

Jo: Such words will be obliterated by this noise. [honk-honk] Is that [honk-honk] well clear?

In The Castle, a parody of TV chef Gordon Ramsey has a "bleeper" who follows him around in public so he doesn't offend anyone.

[imitating vox pop] "I think there is too much swearing in the media." Surely that depends on what's happening in the world? I mean, sometimes there clearly isn't enough swearing, is there? Peter Mandelson's back in government. How THIS SECTION WAS REMOVED FOR COMPLIANCE PURPOSES. on a spring!

This was mocked in a Royal Canadian Air Farce parody of the ING Direct commercials. Walking along the street, the dude selling the bank says, "What can you expect from the [car honk]ing Bank? Well..."

Unexpectedly used, or at least implied, in Adventures in Odyssey. Jason struggles to get an uncooperative answering machine to work...

Jason: Operate! Operate, you worthless hunk of- [BEEEP!]

During the late 70s and early 80s, WBZ Radio in Boston used a rather... unique... bleep noise that sounded something like someone trying to hypnotize a Rubik's Cube... It Makes Sense in Context.

Used in the Hudson And Landry skit, "Obscene Phone Bust". A variety of sound effects are used to censor the Badmouth's insults to the cops, what exactly he said to women on the phone, and also his name and how it is spelled.

Officer: Now just a minute! What's your name, badmouth?

Badmouth: My name is George [squeak honk].

Officer: Did you say [squeak honk]?

Badmouth: Yeah, I said [squeak honk].

Officer: Spelled [xylophone]-T?

Badmouth: Yes, spelled "[xylophone]-T.

Officer: Just like it sounds.

Similarly on Jim Backus' "Dirty Old Man," where the codger uses vulgarities (covered by Hanna-Barbera sound effects) and making dirty malapropisms of women's names.

Sir: (going through the phone book) Oh, here's a good one...Melanie (horn)!

Gwendolyn: No, I believe that's Tate, sir.

Sir: What the (various sounds) is the difference?

Gwendolyn: Shall I dial it for you sir?

Sir: Was Geronimo an Indian?

Gwendolyn: As far as I know, sir.

Sir: (sarcastically) "As far as I know, sir..." you're a pain in the (tweet)! (Gwendolyn dials the number)

François Pérusse's Les Deux Minutes du Peuple uses this in some of his skits (who aren't usually ashamed of being subtly graphic), the most notable one being the skit "Chanson Grivoise" in which a Georges Brassensexpy sings about the porn movie he saw last night. It becomes comically inverted in the last verse, in which the overwhelmed censor bleeps everything except the sex words.

Chick: Boy, it's hot! Reminds me of that time in Panama... I was down there on a story... I was in this, well, dive, and there was this broad there... What was her name?... Marquita?... Maroota?... Ah, what's the difference what her name was? That dame was built like a brick sh— (Sudden cymbal crash and discordant outburst, followed by frantic ensemble repeating refrain "Nice people, nice talk")

In The Complete History Of America Abridged, when the male and female voices announcing the Civil War slideshow get into an argument with each other, several epithets are censored by the same beep sound used for slide transitions. (The slides are lost, by the way.)

Video [YEEOW!] Games

In Half-Life 2, when the player is about to invade the Citadel, Barney's parting words are partly obscured by a heavy crash caused by Dog, resulting in "If you see Dr. Breen tell him I said fu- *CRASH!* -ou!" The crashing sound isn't part of the audio file for Barney's dialogue though, so the line can be heard in full in the game's files. Barney's voice actor even said the "fuck" part softly so that the crash would completely mute it out.

In the Team Fortress 2 promotional video "Meet the Demoman", one of the Demoman's lines is "I'm a black-Scottish cyclops! They got more f[BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP]s than they got the likes o' me." The bleep goes on for quite some time, leading the viewer to believe that the demoman has quite the colorful vocabulary. note But according to files hidden in Source Filmmaker, the bleeped line was actually "They got more feckin' sea monsters in the great Loch o' Ness than they got the likes of me!"

"Meet the Scout" and "Meet the Spy" do it too, but less as a gag and more to make a point: "If you were from where I was from, you'd be f***in' dead." in the former, "And now he's here to f*** us!" in the latter.

This is also present in the Spanish "Meet The Sniper" video. In the English video, there is no such bleep (the English line is "I gotta be honest with ya: My parents...do not care for it").

Then in "Meet the Pyro", the Scout, not wanting to speak ill of the Pyro if he/she/it might be nearby, is struggling to remove his lapel mic and says "How do I get this (mic thump)in' thing off?"

Scout is again responsible for one in "Meet the Medic," albeit in a Curse Cut Short variant...due to an explosion. And an impact with a window where he gets the worse of the encounter.

Scout: Whoa! What the fu—*BOOM!*—UUUUUUU—*CRASH!* ...Medic.

One in "Expiration Date", again from the Spy: "Scout, please, go f*** yourself!"

The commando's first mission in Command & Conquer comes through bad interference: "Get in, kkk destroy the kkkkk and get the kkkkk out."

In StarCraft II, it is replaced with "I don't have time to (VROOOOM!) around!"

The Firebat gets one as one of his attack quotes in 'StarCraft II'' as well.

Firebat: They do not know who they are (FWOOSH)ing with!

Leisure Suit Larry 7 features a pirate named Peggy who swears every other word, but each one is bleeped out. They even bleep out the word "stump".

Da Capo: Suginami helpfully whispers to Nemu the other meaning to her "I want you to do it both ways", ending with a confused Nemu saying "Please ???? my ????, and take your ???? and put it deep and stir, niisan?"

In the Compilation Re-releaseWilliams Arcade's Greatest Hits (and in subsequent re-released versions, including Midway Arcade Treasures), whenever Eugene Jarvis says a naughty word in the various interview segments, he's bleeped out by the sound effect from Defender (and its sequel) that's heard when a lander kidnaps a human.

Sam & Max: Season 2 (or "Beyond Time and Space" for you console owners) has Timmy Two-Teeth, whose dialogue is mostly bleeped out because he has "terminal Tourettes Syndrome". In the Season Finale, What's New Beelzebub?, you find the bleeps are being produced by Hugh Bliss, who is working in the FCC Department of Hell, and the "swear words" that Timmy was using were actually nice versions of swear words.

In the original Dark Forces, when Kyle Katarn confronts a Dark Trooper for the first time, he reacts with "Ah, sh—" *sound of communicator static*

Brütal Legend gives the option early on to use bleeps to censor out profanity for the reason of "It's Funnier Bleeped Out".

Sounds a lot like what Ozzy Osbourne said about the censoring of The Osbournes. Fitting, seeing as he's in the game.

The PlayStation version of You Don't Know Jack has backstage chatter among the employees as it opens. One version has one of the staff complaining about something which is responded in kind with "KISS MY- (AIRHORN)" though the offender quickly apologizes.

In CLANNAD, Misae accidentally reveals her age and the game invokes this to censor it from the players for her.

Blazblue makes use of these on occasion, usually with the sound of the various characters calling out their attacks. In one case this makes for a particularly hilarious scene where Kokonoe suggests ideas of where install a new weapon on the body of Iron Tager, considering his "GIGANTIC TAGER" as an option.

There is a two bleeps in Monday Night Combat (which is censored to maintain a Teen rating), and each is a Lampshade Hanging no less. One of the comments announcer Mickey Cantor may make at the start of a Crossfire match may be, "These Pros are ready to tear each other a new [bleep]!" He'll then go on to either ask who said the offending word or just wonder if he's allowed to say the bleeped-out word on the air.

Grand Theft Auto III has the original GTA theme song on the LIPS 106 station, but "fucked on crack" is censored with "LIPS" and "don't fuck with me" is censored with "106".

In Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath, at one point Stranger has to get a password in order to acess the junkyard where Packrat Palooka is hiding out. Said password comes from someone that Packrat Palooka double-crossed, and they aren't too happy about it, leading to the password being nothing but a long series of beeps.

Stranger: Uh... did you just say *Lengthy series of various beeps*..?

In one Puyo Puyo game, during this intro, despite the game being in Japanese, Incubus swears 3 times, each swear replaced with sounds such as the bleep. note And he embaresses Arle so badly in the process.

In Persona 2, Ulala swears like a sailor. However, she very often has her words bleeped out. She's not the only one, however. At the same time though, this actually gets a lot of crap past the radar...

Borderlands 2: Both Claptrap and Mister Torgue have this in-universe, the former because he's a robot and it's easy to program into him, the latter because his backers got tired of hearing him throw cluster F-bombs at shareholder meetings and had a censor device surgically grafted onto his voice box.

Ozy and Millie had a one-off joke in which Avery was shown using Beep noises every other word, having mistaken the beeps as actual swears, and brushed Ozy off when he tried to correct him.

'Sluggy Freelance has an alternate dimension, the Dimension of Lame, where absolutely nothing evil or nasty exists in any way. As such, when a character tries to say "hell", it gets covered by a bleep, meaning that it actually says says a bleep.

ThisDM of the Rings, where Gimli rolls a 1 on his diplomacy check with the Rohirrim.

Dumbledore:Your mother is a *beep**beep**beep*ing*beep* loremipsum *beep**beep**beep* admiumvenium *beep**beep**beep**beep* dragula *beep**beep**beep**beep**beep**beep* hippopotamus *beep**beep**beep**beep**beep* ing republican *beep**beep* Daniel Radcliffe *beep**beep**beep**beep* with a bucket of *beep**beep**beep**beep* in a castle far away where no one can hear you *beep**beep**beep**beep**beep**beep**beep* soup *beep**beep**beep* with a bucket of *beep**beep* Mickey Mouse *beep**beep* and a stick of dynamite *beeeeeep* magical *beep**beep**beep* alakazam!!!!!!

Jeff: Goddamn it, you stupid piece of *BEEP*, I mean you stupid fuckface!

Used in the Apocalypse Lane video Poker Night, with Willy's description of his first and only date with a guy named Frank...a description punctuated with Noodle Implements, increasingly long bleeps, and increasingly horrified stares on the faces of everyone listening to him (one of who immediately vomits afterwards).

Vegeta: "Son of a gum-chewing funk monster! Why the fruit does all this funny stuff happen to me?! Forget my life! Always surrounded by miserable failing clods! Like this whole world just likes to bend me over and find me in the Alps! Like I'm some sort of schluck receptacle! Well as far as I care, these miserable cows can have a fancy barbeque, with a goddamn pig!"

Yugi: "Okay Pharaoh, you can thank me later. And remember, no hickies!"

Yami: "Huh? YUGI, YOU LITTLE [Beep], YOU SON OF A [Beep] [Beep][Beep]! I'M GOING TO TEAR OFF YOUR [Beep] AND SHOVE THEM RIGHT UP YOUR [Beep][Beepbeep][Beeep], AND THEN [Beeepbeepbeepbeeep][Beep] ON YOUR [Beepbeepbeep][Beeep] WITH [Beeep beep][Beeep]arr IN THE [Beep][Beeepbeeep] AND [Beepbeepbeepbeepbeep] YOU'LL [Beeepbeepbeep] SO THEN YOU'LL HAVE TO [Beep] SIDEWAYS!! (beat) [BEEP]!

Tea: "..."

Yami: "Huh? Hi there."

There is one of Tristan's catchphrases, "Holy [bleep] on a [bleep] sandwich! With [bleep] on top! And a side helping of [bleep])!"

Washu: Oh, you want to do all sorts of thing to my young and beautiful body. You want to [BLEEP] the candle and [BLEEP] it and shove it between my [BLEEP][BLEEP] coating me in hot [BLEEP] wax while you [BLEEP] me in toothpaste for [BLEEP][BLEEP][BLEEP] then [BLEEP][BLEEP] a bike in my a[BLEEP]c[BLEEP] shave my [BLEEP] garden bush [BLEEP][BLEEP] spread my [BLEEP] curtains [BLEEP][BLEEP] a bump [BLEEP] inside my [BLEEP][BLEEP] so inside ready for you to fetch [BLEEP][BLEEP] inside my [BLEEP] fuck it.

Happens in Mario and Luigi's Stupid and Dumb Adventures, in which sometimes, a swear is bleeped out. There was also an episode title for Episode 4 called, WHAT THE F*CK, where Mario says, "PEACH, WHAT THE F*CK." In Episode 5, during the scene when Luigi thinks the cloned Mario (via copier) is the real Mario, and the real Mario is the fake one, Mario and Luigi argue about who is the real Mario, which had bleeps, and then, right before Mario says that the clone is not the real Mario, Luigi says, "Stop saying-" and then the bleep is heard. Later on, Mario once again swears when Luigi gets out a gun, which resulted in a bleep. In Episode 1, the bleep was introduced, when Luigi runs off crying, the bleep is heard.

In this project made by Astro 947, a bleep is heard in one point of the project.

Astro: What was that for?

JJROCKER: This ROLF Cola tastes like-

(Screen goes to Censored Screen. A bleep is heard.)

This project has the following quote that Smugleaf said, and he tried to swear, but the bad word got censored. Here is the quote:

Smugleaf: Have you heard all the fuzz about the new starters? I pity the guys, it's kinda pointless ranting, I mean... "Snake Pokemon? Snakes have no arms, idiot." "That Wotter is ugly as [censored]." note The original version's line was, "That Wotter is ugly as hell."

In the Retsupurae video, What The (CENSORED), The {{Let's Play}}er, Raven Rage, ends up peppering his entire video with nothing but these, drowning out the rest of his play of Super Mario Bros. 3, leaving slowbeef, Diabeetus and Proteus very confused and wondering if they can find other sounds elsewhere.

The Cracked rap video "F#@K Batman: Why Gotham Would Hate the Caped Crusader" uses this a lot during the "F-[BOOM] Batman!" refrain.

One creative soul on YouTube— if the attributions on some copies of the video are to be believed, it's Neil Cicierega— censored every instance of the word "count" used as a verb from The Count Song. As a result, it sounds like Count Von Count is doing some very interesting things to the spiders on the wall... and the cobwebs in the hall... and the candles on the shelf... and when he is alone, he [bleep!] himself.

There's a You Tube video of the The Little Mermaid song "kiss the girl" with every instance of "kiss" replaced with [BLEEP].

Used twice by The Angry Video Game Nerd, a series normally known for its Cluster F Bombs. In Action 52, it's to demonstrate how hypocritical he thinks television stations are with their censorship. In Godzilla the Nerd somehow invents a swear so bad, the have to censor the Nerd.

While most swears are left uncensored in Game Grumps, confidential information (like if someone's name is dropped who wishes to stay anonymous) and the very rare racial slur that slips out are bleeped out. Usually with animal noises or stock sound effects.

Outside Xbox bleep out their own swearing, but not the contents of any videogame clips. This means that you can have one video containing two profanities that are both bleeped out, and another where a game NPC is allowed to throw around the very worst word in the English language with nary a bleep.

Western [CHUKONG!] Animation

One episode of Tiny Toon Adventures was devoted to a caricature of Foghorn Leghorn named Fowlmouth. This episode plays the bleeps in spades, as it's all about Buster trying to get him to start talking clean: including a torture device (complete with washing the mouth with soap). Ironically, while it works, the cartoon ends with Buster picking up the bad words (and being subjected to the same tortures).

Used through an entire episode of Rugrats, "Word of the Day", where Angelica overhears and starts using a (bad) word used backstage by a disgruntled kids' show host. The sound effects became increasingly inventive/desperate. It started with the horn of a studio cart, and ended with a testcard tone. She still managed to get it onto national TV and cause the mental breakdown of the disgruntled TV host, so it's all good.

The Flintstones also did this once, with Fred then asking the speaker to repeat himself and explaining that he couldn't hear him over the bleep.

Both used and subverted by SpongeBob SquarePants in the episode "Sailor Mouth". Spongebob learns there are thirteen words a sailor should never use, all of which are covered up by different sound effects (including various horns and sea animal noises). At the end, what seems to be a use of one of them is just the horn from "Old Mister Jenkins' jalopy".

Further subverted when it turns out that [dolphin noise] (the actual noise, not something bleeped by a dolphin noise) is just about the worst expletive ever.

There's also the episode where Spongebob censors out the ingredients of the Krabby Patty secret formula in his song.

Parodied in an episode of KaBlam!. Henry keeps getting bleeped at least once in every sentence he says, even though he insists that he isn't cursing, and ends up going on a bleep heavy rant. Turns out his co-host June has a device that is supplying the bleeps, and is censoring random words to cheese him off. It is implied that by the end of the sketch he is being bleeped for real.

Also parodied in an episode of Futurama. In "Where No Fan Has Gone Before" Leela is put into the a robot chair, where she will be able to testify using series of beeps to convey her testimony. When Zapp Brannigan makes a lewd comment, Leela replies "Go (bleep from the machine) yourself"

Constantly skewered in The Simpsons. One recent example had a rooster appear out of nowhere in a living room to do it.

Occasionally, the show even censors itself as a joke, as seen when a TV producer, reacting to Homer's sudden appearance on the set of a soap opera starring Moe, blurts out "What the f(BLEEP)dge?"

The most iconic example occurs in Who Shot Mr. Burns?, Part One. Homer quietly tells the kids to go outside, stands up, takes a deep breath...

Homer: FFFFFFFFFFFFF-

Church organ hits minor chord, birds flee into the sky, every person in Springfield freezes in place, eyes wide.

Flanders: Good Lord, that's the loudest profanity I've ever heard!

Back in the early days when Sky 1 was a family friendly channel, they used to cut all instances of rude words. One exception was in the episode 'A Star is Burns' - when Moe's short film is played, the last word of the song he sings "...and you're out on your ass!" was covered by adding in a soundbite of the audience gasping.

The episode "Guess Who's Coming to Criticize Dinner" had a scene near the beginning with Homer going into a bleep-laden tirade at being stuck behind an ambulance.

Done again in the last segment of Treehouse of Horror IX - justified that the family ends up having to go on the Jerry Springer show.

Marge: I'm so *BEEP*ing embarrassed...

Used to the point of exhaustion in South Park, but with a real bleep. The very first episode has a perfect example when Kyle is cursing out the aliens who are taking his brother, Ike, after they ignore his heartfelt plea. The later seasons have less swearing and bleeping.

Kyle:Hey you skanky-ass sh<BLEEP>! What the <BLEEP> is wrong with you!?! You must be some sort of <BLEEEEP> to ignore a crying child!

Stan: Whoa, dude!

Kyle:You know what you <BLEEP>ers like? You like to <BLEEP> and <BLEEP> and <BLEEP> and <BLEEP> and <BLEEP> and <BLEEP>!

Stan: Wendy, what's a <BLEEP>?

Notable instance of Painting the Medium in the episode where they see how many times they can get away with saying "shit." In the B-story, Mr. Garrison is indulging his new ability as a recently de-closeted gay man to say "fag." If anyone who isn't gay attempts to use the word, they are bleeped, and everyone is aware of the bleepage. Later one character (Jimbo) says, "That's not fair! I want to say 'fag' too!" He's not bleeped.

It is worth noting that Season 11 and upward episodes that appear on the South Park Studios website usually show without any censor beeps. The newly launched (in the UK) Comedy Central HD channel also airs the episodes from this season upwards unbeeped, whilst the normal Comedy Central channel airs the same episode with beeps. This also counts for Season 8 and upwards, as these episodes have been remastered in High Definition as well and have an uncensored audio track.

South Park is incredibly loose with its censoring, generally allowing the characters to throw around insults involving the words 'ass' and 'cock' but usually censoring the likes of 'f*ck' and 'sh!t', and some racial slurs. Usually. In any case most of it is censored when it gets released to DVD too. Mostly.

Infamously, "201" was censored with a long, disruptive bleep that actually cuts off the background music. The DVD version cleans it up so the music is also audible, and in the commentary, Parker and Stone actually succeed in tempting the bleep censor by discussing classified material at one point, which makes you wonder if the censorship of the episode and its predecessor (which was merely pulled from TV and given the No Export for You treatment) was actually a well-timed publicity stunt coordinated by Parker, Stone, and Viacom.

Everything Kenny says is 'censored' by his muffling parka. This helps disguise when he's cursing, or the many times he explains sex acts in detail to the other kids. If he's talking clean, you can usually get the gist of what he's saying on your second viewing, or in some of the subtitles.

Profanity in Metalocalypse is bleeped out with guitar licks such as pinch harmonics and whammy bar divebombs. Shortly into the show's first season, swearing on the Adult Swim forums was censored with (guitar riff), and has been ever since.

Another [adult swim] show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, started out with using the standard bleep for censoring, but by around the third or fourth season, censoring was done with just about every conceivable sound effect but the standard bleep.

In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie, the f-word is alternately bleeped and not bleeped. When it is bleeped, however, it's usually soft enough or short enough that you can still hear the profanity used.

The Mexican dub of Drawn Together uses this one for Getting Crap Past the Radar; the original version does this to censor Mickey Mouse's name in one episode. The first time, they get the censorship right by bleeping "Mickey" when Princess Clara says, "Oh my God, it's Mickey Mouse!" However, when Captain Hero says his name exactly one line later, they trigger the bleep one word too late and so it comes out as "Mickey Mouse".

The first episode of Family Guy had Lois say "What the-", only to be cut off by the horn from Peter's boat. And in that same episode, Peter said that losing that Talent Show was "BULL-", only to then be bleeped out by applause from the audience to the winners.

In another, her cookies finish baking just as she says that she's like a hawk: "Mess with my kids and I'll claw your f[Ding!]ing eyes out."

In the 4th Season of Family Guy, Peter set up a TV station which was shut down by the FCC. After an offhand remark from Peter, the FCC starts censoring real life, including removing swearwords through the use of an air horn, leading to this memorable quote:

Peter: Lois, you are so full of HONK! ...What!?! I can't say HONK in my own HONKing house? HONKing great, Lois, just HONKing great! You're lucky you're good at HONKing my HONK or I'd never put up with you. You know what I'm talking about. When you HONK lubed up HONK toothpaste in my HONK and you HONK cherry HONK Episcopalian HONK extension cord HONK wetness HONKwith a parking ticket? That is the best!

Best of all....

Lois: (trying to open a bag of chips) Come on, you son of a [HONK]. (Startles, opens bag, spills chips on floor) Ah, [HONK] me...'''

In another one Lois reads her title on the television screen on Diane Simmons talkshow which reads "She's probably more of a bitch then she lets on" and she responds "Go [BEEP] yourself Diane".

Seth MacFarlane once said in an interview that back in Family Guy's first two seasons, it was a big deal to even have a swear word bleeped, so they had to use sound effects. However, in the Season 3 premiere, they finally got a standard bleep. It's gotten to the point where nearly every episode in recent seasons has at least one bleeped-out swear word in it.

The show will also often censor profanity by replacing them with less-offensive words in the televised versions.

The PBS children's show Arthur used this as the basis of an episode, titled "Bleep," where D.W. heard a teenager using a word that made his mom drop something but didn't know what it meant. She got her whole preschool class using it, and the Tibbles told her that the word also meant that the person you say it to will do whatever you want for you. Her mother finally told her swear words basically mean "I want to hurt your feelings."

Ironiclly despite the aesop, this episode isn't played very often. Parents pretty much raised a fuss over the constant bleeping. This show is aimed at pre-schoolers and runs on PBS after all.

In another episode, Muffy wants to use the jungle gym that was already claimed by The Tough Customers. When Molly yells at Muffy, her speech is cut off by the school bell ringing. Later, the two discuss how Muffy can give the jungle gym back to Molly but their plan is cut off by a gardener mowing the lawn outside.

In an episode of Home Movies, the kitchen catches fire, causing Brendon's mom to say "Son of a —", at which point, the smoke detector goes off, effectively bleeping out the rest of her sentence. Brendon appears amused and impressed by the timing of these events.

Another ep, which takes place on Halloween, had Brendon swearing at his dad's girlfriend during her pregnancy when she get fed up with his (rather rude) pestering. She response back in kind which all the words bleeped out.

Would you believe the Finding NemoDVD Commentary contains not one, but two instances of this, once using a slide whistle sound effect? The other one uses a standard beeping sound, but it's still worth mentioning...

Lee Unkrich (co-director): Who does the voice of those seagulls, by the way?

Bob Peterson (co-writer): I believe it's Andrew Stanton, director of Finding Nemo! [Please note that it had already been mentioned that Stanton also voiced Crush the turtle] Were you going to let anyone else do voices in this film?

which is then re-done when it is asked who his Mom is. Well, her real name is-(another loud truck)- but everyone calls her mom.

An episode of Animaniacs that started with a dramatic, action-packed, and totally bogus Previously On sequence included, as a Running Gag, a guy going "Oh my..." and getting cut off by an explosion from off-screen.

In "Cutie and The Beast", Dot messes up her long name and due to this, part of it is censored.

In the Pound Puppies (1980s) episode "Ghost Hounders" after discovering that Katrina Stoneheart was going to have all the puppies shipped to a fur factory, Nose Marie declares that Katrina is "nothing but a...", then a "CENSORED" sign appears and is bleeped out by the "cuckoo clock" sound effect that was often heard in game shows and such. Cooler then tells her to watch her language, to which she responds "Well, pardon my little ol' peaches".

In American Dad! They briefly parody the famous scene at the end of Jaws with a quote as Hailey's Internet Game Character is about to shoot her arrow at the pressure tank in the monsters mouth. "Smile you son of a—" *arrow woosh*

Happened throughout a The Powerpuff Girls episode ("Curses", appropriately), where the girls learned a curse word without knowing what it meant.

In the movie, one of the monkeys seeking to be what Mojo Jojo is trying to be—ruler of Townsville—is Hota Wata, whose self-promoting spiel ends with "I don't give a—" before a dam is exploded and it cuts to Mojo who says "Watch yo' mouth!" The original storyboard had Hota Wata completing the sentence.

The 2016 version episode, In the Garden of Good and Eddie, the girls get fed up with a caterpiller name Tabitha, or Eddie as she likes to be called, after she unwittingly eats their giant tomato they wanted to enter into a contest. As the girls tell her off, Bubbles adds in something that is drowned out be the sound of a truck backing up. But judging by Blossom, Buttercup and Eddie's reactions, it was obviously a very naughty word.

The Cleveland Show subverted this when Cleveland ducked back underwater before swearing, but then the swear is still audible slightly later in an air bubble.

The Dresden Files tries this a couple times even when other swearing progresses as normal. Harry was once tasered while swearing (I think the self-narrator was swearing, so there's no reason to cut off, but he did).

The Duckman episode "Ebony, Baby" uses an air-horn salesman's display to drown out guest voice-actor Ice-T's profanity-laced rant. He's finally asked to tone it down because the horns are so annoying.

The Total Drama series, being a parody of reality shows, occasionally makes use of these. One particular notable example involves Lindsay telling off Heather with an angry tirade composed entirely of one long censor bleep.

In the King of the Hill episode "Father of the Bribe" Dale is getting tired of not getting enough viewers for his radio talk show he says "And I can't drum up any new sales because I'm stuck behind this f(beep)ing microphone 24 hours a day".

Parodied in the Rocko's Modern Life episode "Dear John": When Heffer reads a chapter in a home improvement book about things you can say when the hammer slips, random sound effects come out of his mouth. Rocko asks to read the book himself, and finds the exact sounds written down.

"If a wrench slips off the pipe and lands on your big toe, you can say... HONK! or BOING! or FWEEP! or AHOOGAH! or BUZZ!"

The Secret Show: Random sounds at the episode where Changed Daily's original name is mentioned prevent the viewers from hearing it.

A Cartoon Network bumper had Fred from Scooby-Doo going into profanity-laced diatribe (all bleeped, of course) when somebody asked him about his ascot. The rest of Mystery Inc. look at him in stunned silence.

The Royal Canadian Kilted Yaksmen song from The Ren & Stimpy Show contained the line "And we will probably go to (fart)/And that is our great reward". No points for guessing what got bleeped (or, in this case, farted) out. (In all fairness, this was from its Nickelodeon run, so not even a mild swear could normally slip through.)

Ren and Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon used a duck-like honking sound as a bleep.

Space Ghost: Now, woodpile, did you or did you not masquerade as eels and socked Zorak with that wrench? Answer me! Now, what about these beans? Moltar: Those must've fallen out of my hair. beatMoltar: Well, you're just making all this BLEEP up! beatMoltar: ...Oh, what? You're the only one that gets to make BLEEP up? beat* This happened in the Garfield and Friends segment "Kiddie Korner", but not with a swear word. The word "Da Dum" would be replaced by a Sting, as if it were a curse word, and it even happened when Orson read Aloysius' card. It was only uncensored once, after they did Georgie Porgie.

In an episode of Back at the Barnyard all about Pig making and selling his Grandma's famous pies, a character asks him what thew "secret ingredient" of her recipe is.

Pig: Well since you asked, the secret ingredient is (a chicken walks in front of him and quacks like a duck, all of the characters make grossed out sounds.)

In an episode of Baby Looney Tunes the babies hear the garbage man say a word after he drops a garbage can on his foot. Later on after Daffy loses at a game, he says the word again, thinking it's a word to use when angry. After Granny tell them not to use the word, they have to spend the rest of the episode dealing with anger in another way. The word itself is censored by a "squeak-squeak" sound.

The Loud House: In "Get the Message", Lincoln leaves a strongly-worded message on Lori's phone.

Lincoln: Hey, Lori, you are— (Luna bursts into the room rocking out on her guitar while Lincoln goes on a crazy rant; she exits) AND THAT IS WHY YOU ARE THE WORST! SISTER!EVER!!!

Seven Little Monsters: In the episode "The Bad Word" Two hears a carpenter named Stinky use a bad word after hitting his thumb with a hammer, which is censored out by a steam whistle. After he utters the word in front of his siblings and later his mother, his mother tells a story about a boy like him who used the same word. Throughout the course of the episode, the word is bleeped out with various animal sounds.

When News & Newsreel started in 1954, being run by News Division from radio, it was decreed that nothing was to be added that hadn't actually happened on the news story. So no music, no sound effects etc. Just the bare bones, which meant that often it was largely just still pictures with a Voice Over, 'Frozen Radio' as someone called it. But eventually they did get over this drawback, and one day around 1960, when we were dubbing a news story about aircraft, and it contained an interview with a Group-Captain Chester (or similar name), it was discovered that in editing, part of the man's title had been cut off the sound, reducing him to 'plop' Captain Chester..... Well, what to do about it, the Group-Captain would probably object..... 'Can't we "hide" it somehow?' someone said, and I found a disc of a jet fly-past, to spin in just at that crucial moment. And they used to say that the News shouldn't be 'fixed'...

An unusual example was done by an audience at a wrestling promotion. At the previous show, the general manager complained about the language used by the audience. At the next show, the chant "Holy Shit" was verbally beeped out—by the word "Beep". ; the chant became "Holy Beep". The general manager found it HILARIOUS.

The infamous tapes by Richard Nixon were censored by Nixon himself. As documented by the film Nixon:

Nixon: Have you lost your mind? Look, Al! Nixon can't say this! "Niggers". Niggers?! It can't say that! We could delete it... Would you have us black it out, sir? We could write "expletive deleted." Cut all these 'goddamns' and 'Jesus Christs' out.

President's Lawyer: Jesus. Mr. President. Don't you see that all these deletion marks in the transcripts make it look as though you... you do nothing but swear?

According to rumor, the Chinese government tested censoring Chinese swear words with the "BEEEEP" sound. Unfortunately and hilariously, the common Chinese insult "stupid bitch" is "Sha Bi", pronounced "shah bee". Therefore, censors resulted in "shah beeeeep". Unsurprisingly, the censor was not put into effect.

US fitness center chain Planet Fitness does not take kindly to people who grunt while lifting weights or drop weights. So all of their locations make use of a "lunk alarm", a rotating blue light and air raid siren that is activated breifly to drown out the noise if someone is caught doing it.

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